Internet was often unusable, but ISP charges giant fee to one-person business.

Share this story

Frontier Communications reportedly charged a cancellation fee of $4,302.17 to the operator of a one-person business in Wisconsin, even though she switched to a different Internet provider because Frontier's service was frequently unusable.

Candace Lestina runs the Pardeeville Area Shopper, a weekly newspaper and family business that she took over when her mother retired. Before retiring, her mother had entered a three-year contract with Frontier to provide Internet service to the one-room office on North Main Street in Pardeeville. Six months into the contract, Candace Lestina decided to switch to the newly available Charter offering "for better service and a cheaper bill," according to a story yesterday by News 3 Now in Wisconsin.

The Frontier Internet service "was dropping all the time," Lestina told the news station. This was a big problem for Lestina, who runs the paper on her own in Pardeeville, a town of about 2,000 people. "I actually am everything. I make the paper, I distribute the paper," she said. Because of Frontier's bad service, "I would have times where I need to send my paper—I have very strict deadlines with my printer—and my Internet's out."

In Pardeeville, Frontier's website lists offers for DSL Internet service plans with speeds from 3Mbps to 12Mbps, but not for higher-speed fiber lines that are generally only available in bigger cities and towns. DSL speeds are often significantly lower than the "up to" speeds advertised by providers.

Further Reading

Lestina figured she'd have to pay a cancellation fee when she switched to Charter's faster cable Internet but nothing near the $4,300 that Frontier later sent her a bill for, the News 3 Now report said. Charter offered to pay $500 toward the early termination penalty, but the fee is still so large that it could "put her out of business," the news report said.

Business Internet plans have different terms

Business Internet service is generally offered under different terms than residential Internet service. Frontier's business Internet terms and conditions, posted on the company's website, say that customers terminating service must pay the monthly charges for all remaining months in a contract. By contrast, Frontier's residential terms list termination fees of up to $400 regardless of how much time is left in the contract.

Lestina said the early termination fee wasn't fully spelled out in her contract. "Nothing is ever described of what those cancellation fees actually are, which is that you will pay your entire bill for the rest of the contract," she said.

Lestina said she pleaded her case to Frontier representatives, without success, even though Frontier had failed to provide a consistent Internet connection. "They did not really care that I was having such severe problems with the service. That does not bother them," she said.

Instead of waiving or reducing the cancellation fee, Frontier threatened to send the matter to a collections agency, Lestina said.

News 3 Now spoke with Michelle Reinen, director of Wisconsin's Bureau of Consumer Protection. When it comes to requiring specific disclosures to consumers, business Internet is subject to a more vague state law than residential Internet, Reinen said. The state law "doesn't say that the service provider must disclose what the cancellation policy is," but cancellation policies should be "part of the contract and negotiations," she said.

"We want to see what's happening here," Reinen said, according to News 3 Now. "Is this a one-off situation [regarding] a specific contract, or is this a practice that we should be monitoring? Because we want to make sure the law is being followed appropriately."

The matter hadn't been resolved as of yesterday. "Candace hasn't gotten a call from collections yet—in fact, she's having a hard time getting in touch with Frontier," the news story said. "So is News 3 Now—the company had not responded to our requests for comment as of 9am Thursday."

We contacted Lestina and Frontier with questions today and will update this story if we get any more information.

The matter hadn't been resolved as of yesterday. "Candace hasn't gotten a call from collections yet—in fact, she's having a hard time getting in touch with Frontier," the news story said. "So is News 3 Now—the company had not responded to our requests for comment as of 9am Thursday."

We contacted Lestina and Frontier with questions today and will update this story if we get any more information.

Maybe they haven't been getting the messages because they have crappy Frontier internet service.

Not sure why anyone would ever cancel a contract with those terms. If you're going to pay the same amount over 30 months as you'd have to pay up-front, simply spread out the payments.

Of course, business-class service contracts also generally have performance guarantees in them. So I'd be calling every time my speedtest results weren't close to the "up-to" speed I had paid for. Eventually Frontier would offer to let me drop.

We need a legally mandated law that if you sign a contract for someone to provide that service, and they cannot adequately provide said service, the contract becomes null and void.

I hope she can fight this one and win.

Though, with the current state of the FCC, I'm not going to hold my breath that they'll do something. Public shaming is probably her only hope.

IANAL, but isn't that breach of contract? Perhaps rather than following Frontier's procedure for terminating the contract, she could sue them in small claims for breach of contract. If the early termination fee isn't actually spelled out in the contract, Frontier might not be able to enforce it in court.

We need a legally mandated law that if you sign a contract for someone to provide that service, and they cannot adequately provide said service, the contract becomes null and void.

I hope she can fight this one and win.

Though, with the current state of the FCC, I'm not going to hold my breath that they'll do something. Public shaming is probably her only hope.

Usually business class service is better than that. She probably should keep the service and get the cheapest thing she can as a backup. At $4300 to cancel with 30 months remaining that's more than $140 a month to cancel plus whatever she pays the next ISP.

My guess is that Lestina didn't document the frequency and duration of the outages. Hopefully she kept records of any repair requests. Otherwise, it's hard to prove that the outages were bad enough to warrant dropping Frontier's service. That's the bad part about these types of issues. Hopefully she has enough documentation to take it to small claims court.

Not sure why anyone would ever cancel a contract with those terms. If you're going to pay the same amount over 30 months as you'd have to pay up-front, simply spread out the payments.

Of course, business-class service contracts also generally have performance guarantees in them. So I'd be calling every time my speedtest results weren't close to the "up-to" speed I had paid for. Eventually Frontier would offer to let me drop.

Tht or you’d spend half your life trying to get through to them with zero positive results.

We need a legally mandated law that if you sign a contract for someone to provide that service, and they cannot adequately provide said service, the contract becomes null and void.

I hope she can fight this one and win.

Though, with the current state of the FCC, I'm not going to hold my breath that they'll do something. Public shaming is probably her only hope.

IANAL, but isn't that breach of contract? Perhaps rather than following Frontier's procedure for terminating the contract, she could sue them in small claims for breach of contract. If the early termination fee isn't actually spelled out in the contract, Frontier might not be able to enforce it in court.

Lots of these contracts reference standard terms available on their website.

The breach would be if there are any performance guarantees that aren't met. Meticulously documenting actual performance numbers goes a long way in small claims (or any) court.

Not sure why anyone would ever cancel a contract with those terms. If you're going to pay the same amount over 30 months as you'd have to pay up-front, simply spread out the payments.

Of course, business-class service contracts also generally have performance guarantees in them. So I'd be calling every time my speedtest results weren't close to the "up-to" speed I had paid for. Eventually Frontier would offer to let me drop.

Tht or you’d spend half your life trying to get through to them with zero positive results.

I suspect the state has a lemon law for services. Those aren't generally restricted to car sales. If they failed to fix a recurring problem 3 times in a row, e.g.

I had Frontier service at my previous address, and was very happy with it. They had fiber-to-the-node and provided consistently fast speeds, on par with Comcast offerings at the time, at a better price. This was originally AT&T UVerse, but AT&T sold this portion of the business to Frontier in mid 2014.

When I move last June, I found that my new address only offered Frontier's DSL service, which was the same price as the "fiber" I had before, for about 1/8th the speed. Obviously I opted to cancel my service. I was well outside of any contract window at that point and on a month-to-month arrangement.

They repeatedly put me on hold and transferred me to a wide variety of different departments, none of whom were actually interested in canceling my service. They continued to try to retain me as a customer even though they knew they were incapable of providing the service I wanted. Eventually, after a half dozen calls and over 12 hours on the phone altogether, they finally canceled. By this time, it was July 2nd.

Imagine my shock when I found they billed me for an entire additional month's service, a cancellation fee, and then attempted to charge me interest and late fees when I told them I would absolutely not be paying.

After another dozen or so calls back and forth, I finally got them to drop the erroneous charges, leaving me with a zero balance per their website.

The next month, they charged me a $25 late fee, because there was a balance on the account at the time the previous statement was generated or some such BS. Eventually they sent it to collections. At that point I just paid it, because my credit rating is worth more to me than $25, but I will use dial-up internet from AOL before I ever do business with Frontier again.

We need a legally mandated law that if you sign a contract for someone to provide that service, and they cannot adequately provide said service, the contract becomes null and void.

I hope she can fight this one and win.

Though, with the current state of the FCC, I'm not going to hold my breath that they'll do something. Public shaming is probably her only hope.

We need to have ISPs charge in accordance to what the proportions of the speed the customer orders they can actually provide are. This whole "up to XXX Mbs for $YY" needs to stop. They know they can't provide the numbers they advertise 100%, but heaven forbid you don't pay 100% of your bill. They can only provide 85% of the speed for the billing month? They should only charge 85% of that part of the bill. If you go to a bar and order a 22oz beer, you don't expect to be given an eight ounce glass and be charged the full amount. If you go to the dentist for work, you don't expect to be told that it will be $250 copay for 2 cavities filled and they stop at 1. If I buy a new car, they don't leave off one of the wheels. If I go to a steak house and my 20oz NY strip is the size of a 4oz filet Mignon, I certainly am not expected to pay for the bill.

Not sure why anyone would ever cancel a contract with those terms. If you're going to pay the same amount over 30 months as you'd have to pay up-front, simply spread out the payments.

Of course, business-class service contracts also generally have performance guarantees in them. So I'd be calling every time my speedtest results weren't close to the "up-to" speed I had paid for. Eventually Frontier would offer to let me drop.

Nah, they'd claim your test is incorrect and still charge you for the duration of the contract.

No surprise, until we get real legislation to deal with these ISPs, they will continue to abuse customers.

My centurylink DSL has been giving me issues for 4 weeks now. A service tech was supposed to come out and fix the situation for over 3 weeks now, and finally yesterday they were able to address one of the many issues we've had, but I'm still only getting ~ 1Mbps compared to the 4 Mbps I pay for.

What's nutty is that I live ~40 mins from Seattle, hell the small town I live 2 miles from even has gig internet options. What ever happened to expanding rural internet?

Sorry for the sidetracked rant, but after dealing with another crappy ISP for a month, any story about them just boils my blood even more.

Not sure why anyone would ever cancel a contract with those terms. If you're going to pay the same amount over 30 months as you'd have to pay up-front, simply spread out the payments.

Of course, business-class service contracts also generally have performance guarantees in them. So I'd be calling every time my speedtest results weren't close to the "up-to" speed I had paid for. Eventually Frontier would offer to let me drop.

You shouldn't have to jump through those hoops though. If the business isn't providing the level of service you pay for, you should be able to cancel the contract without penalty, as they are demonstrably not meeting their contractual obligations.

I switched to Comcast Business because I was having so many issues with Comcast Residential (they are operated as separate companies just using the same cable--they have their own sales and support, and they don't play games with fees and changing rates). I had a two year contract that then ran month-to-month. I was nervous during those two years--what if I had to move somewhere where Comcast doesn't exist? I'd have to pay the full amount.

But if they aren't even offering a reliable service, as someone said, that sounds like a breach of contract.

Comcast tried to do something similar to me. I had business class internet and I had a 2 year contract with them. If I left before the end of the contract, I owed them the remainder of every single month of service. That's insane but since they were my only Internet provider I had nowhere to go. Eight months after my contract ended, AT&T came to town with Gigapower so I reviewed my contract and saw nothing that would indicate that I would have any problems. When I went to cancel, the Comcast rep informed me that I would owe them one month's notice and therefore one more month's fee. I told them there's no such verbiage in the contract. They pointed me to a URL in the contract. I clicked on the URL and it 404'ed. They were insistent that the clause was there. They had to search a while before they could show me. I told them I would fight it. I filed a complaint with the BBB in Pennsylvania (even though I live in Georgia) since Comcast corporate is in Philadelphia detailing what they did. Within a day I was contacted by Comcast independently stating that they would waive the fee if I removed the complaint. They did and I did.

The notion that a contract can be binding when linking to an external URL that can be modified at any point after the contract is signed without notification to the other party (the URL 404'ed; I had no way of verifying the veracity of the rep's claim) is ridiculous. If there's any lawyer reading this, how can a contract point to additional terms like that without any sort of consequence? Theoretically, I could download the contents of that link at the time I sign the contract but all I have to go on that they don't silently change the terms is well ... nothing. It would be my word against theirs.

I had Frontier service at my previous address, ... The next month, they charged me a $25 late fee, because there was a balance on the account at the time the previous statement was generated or some such BS. Eventually they sent it to collections. At that point I just paid it, because my credit rating is worth more to me than $25, but I will use dial-up internet from AOL before I ever do business with Frontier again.

After signing up recently for Frontier for the house, for two months, being assured that there were no contracts, we canceled, and went with Spectrum.Thing is, they got us with an early termination fee, and had to pay $200.I kind of understand if they were trying to recoup on their installation costs though. But I had everything setup already, including my own Verizon modem already connected. I sent the installer away after they connected the outside box, and called to have the modem activated.If I had known that they would have charged that termination fee, I would have had them run all new cabling, and probably should have not returned the hdmi cables, but was afraid of getting raped for $15 a cable or something.

What does the SLA say? There has to be an SLA, even if it's crappy. Escalate the problem up. Find the contact info for a VP or C suite exec and contact them. I've had to do that in certain situations and you do get results. It takes time and is hard to track people down but it can be done.

What does the SLA say? There has to be an SLA, even if it's crappy. Escalate the problem up. Find the contact info for a VP or C suite exec and contact them. I've had to do that in certain situations and you do get results. It takes time and is hard to track people down but it can be done.

Yeah...the whole point of a business connection is that there are service guarantees. That's why they cost more than a consumer connection. If they aren't meeting those, then they breached the contract, which should nullify any right to collect termination fees. (IANAL, but I don't see why this would work differently than, e.g., a rental contract, which generally have similar rules - i.e. if the landlord doesn't meet their obligations, you can leave early with no penalty.)

Not sure why anyone would ever cancel a contract with those terms. If you're going to pay the same amount over 30 months as you'd have to pay up-front, simply spread out the payments.

Of course, business-class service contracts also generally have performance guarantees in them. So I'd be calling every time my speedtest results weren't close to the "up-to" speed I had paid for. Eventually Frontier would offer to let me drop.

What we're talking about here sounds like "small business" internet, which usually does come with better support, but is otherwise essentially just more expensive home internet service. If you look at Frontier's small business plans, they (like every other US ISP it seems) don't even list upload speeds. Do you really think these plans come with any sort of SLA?

We need a legally mandated law that if you sign a contract for someone to provide that service, and they cannot adequately provide said service, the contract becomes null and void.

I hope she can fight this one and win.

Though, with the current state of the FCC, I'm not going to hold my breath that they'll do something. Public shaming is probably her only hope.

IANAL, but isn't that breach of contract? Perhaps rather than following Frontier's procedure for terminating the contract, she could sue them in small claims for breach of contract. If the early termination fee isn't actually spelled out in the contract, Frontier might not be able to enforce it in court.

It's only breach of contract if the contract made any guarantees as to the service Frontier is bound to provide. I'd be willing to bet the contract stipulated Candace's obligations (including the ETF) very clearly, somewhere, but left Frontier's own obligations vague at best. Remember, we're talking about a small business owner with about as much negotiating power as a regular home internet user, not someone with the resources or power to negotiate a contract that doesn't leave them vulnerable to the whims of their ISP.

With regards to residential customers getting caught in "account retention" hell, I've had good luck with "I'm moving out of state, so I need to close my account". Doesn't help with early-termination fees and all that nonsense, but it at least short-circuits the endless transfers and so forth.

Comcast tried to do something similar to me. I had business class internet and I had a 2 year contract with them. If I left before the end of the contract, I owed them the remainder of every single month of service. That's insane but since they were my only Internet provider I had nowhere to go. Eight months after my contract ended, AT&T came to town with Gigapower so I reviewed my contract and saw nothing that would indicate that I would have any problems. When I went to cancel, the Comcast rep informed me that I would owe them one month's notice and therefore one more month's fee. I told them there's no such verbiage in the contract. They pointed me to a URL in the contract. I clicked on the URL and it 404'ed. They were insistent that the clause was there. They had to search a while before they could show me. I told them I would fight it. I filed a complaint with the BBB in Pennsylvania (even though I live in Georgia) since Comcast corporate is in Philadelphia detailing what they did. Within a day I was contacted by Comcast independently stating that they would waive the fee if I removed the complaint. They did and I did.

The notion that a contract can be binding when linking to an external URL that can be modified at any point after the contract is signed without notification to the other party (the URL 404'ed; I had no way of verifying the veracity of the rep's claim) is ridiculous. If there's any lawyer reading this, how can a contract point to additional terms like that without any sort of consequence? Theoretically, I could download the contents of that link at the time I sign the contract but all I have to go on that they don't silently change the terms is well ... nothing. It would be my word against theirs.

Contrarily, when I cancelled my Comcast Business service, it was so easy I was shocked. One phone call, no more than 15 minutes with no 'customer retention' BS. I had to return my CPE by the end of the billing cycle, and could do so by dropping it at any UPS location free of charge.

If FIOS hadn't come to my street, I'd still be a happy Comcast Business customer today. They were better that FIOS in some ways, being fully IPv6 dual-stack ready, but they just can't compete with FIOS price per megabit.

I had Frontier service at my previous address, and was very happy with it. They had fiber-to-the-node and provided consistently fast speeds, on par with Comcast offerings at the time, at a better price. This was originally AT&T UVerse, but AT&T sold this portion of the business to Frontier in mid 2014.

When I move last June, I found that my new address only offered Frontier's DSL service, which was the same price as the "fiber" I had before, for about 1/8th the speed. Obviously I opted to cancel my service. I was well outside of any contract window at that point and on a month-to-month arrangement.

They repeatedly put me on hold and transferred me to a wide variety of different departments, none of whom were actually interested in canceling my service. They continued to try to retain me as a customer even though they knew they were incapable of providing the service I wanted. Eventually, after a half dozen calls and over 12 hours on the phone altogether, they finally canceled. By this time, it was July 2nd.

Imagine my shock when I found they billed me for an entire additional month's service, a cancellation fee, and then attempted to charge me interest and late fees when I told them I would absolutely not be paying.

After another dozen or so calls back and forth, I finally got them to drop the erroneous charges, leaving me with a zero balance per their website.

The next month, they charged me a $25 late fee, because there was a balance on the account at the time the previous statement was generated or some such BS. Eventually they sent it to collections. At that point I just paid it, because my credit rating is worth more to me than $25, but I will use dial-up internet from AOL before I ever do business with Frontier again.

Pro-tip for next time: figure out who their regulator is and make a formal complaint.

Suddenly you'll be their best friend and they will be able to drop those charges for you, sure thing no problem.

I have a contract for my business with Cox for fiber broadband service and the cancellation fee (paying for the remainder of the contract) is clearly spelled out. I wonder if her contract had any QOS clauses though. It's a bad situation since it appears the service was unreliable.

Frontier can take their copper DSL straight to hades and burn. The DSL service I had was supposed to be 5/1 but I rarely got even 1 mbps down. If it worked at all. I had to tether to my mobile connection just to get bills paid and other critical stuff done.

I was paying $60/month just to have a contracted tech tell me repeatedly it was my equipment that was causing the bottleneck. Yeah right.

I got lucky though, and a local co-op rolled out FTTH in my neighborhood, and now I get a sweet 200/100 connection.

Not sure why anyone would ever cancel a contract with those terms. If you're going to pay the same amount over 30 months as you'd have to pay up-front, simply spread out the payments.

Of course, business-class service contracts also generally have performance guarantees in them. So I'd be calling every time my speedtest results weren't close to the "up-to" speed I had paid for. Eventually Frontier would offer to let me drop.

This, if I couldn't get it canceled reasonably, I'd become the biggest pain in their ass I could be. I'd be on tech support every day that it wasn't up to snuff.

Don't pay it. Frontier doesn't even honor their own contracts. While I was in a 2 year contract my monthly bill increased several times. Everyone's did. The county received many complaints, yet they are still in business. Bend over and take it.

Not sure if this is the same agreement she was bound to though. There is wording on credits being available for outages. I couldn't find anything about continued service outages though, I got about halfway down and quit reading. I skimmed through a lot of it too.